Jan. 7, 2014

Eleazar Soto took a photo of gray water backflowing from where his clothes washer drains on Jan. 21, 2013. / Submitted photo

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Eleazar Soto stands in the middle of a basement that was once finished and converted to a master bedroom. Two sewage backflows in 2013 left the basement damaged, and Soto searching for reimbursement from the city of Ozark. / Rance Burger/News-Leader

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An Ozark man will take problems with sewer lines before the Ozark Board of Aldermen after the city’s insurance company declined to pay for damages to his house.

Eleazar Soto and his wife, Jessica, live on South Seventh Street with their two sons. They own one of the only houses in the neighborhood with a basement.

In 2013, the Sotos experienced two instances of raw sewage backing up and flowing into their finished basement, which houses their bedroom.

On Jan. 21, the family prepared to leave the house for an outing.

“I went downstairs to go change and noticed water coming out of the drain for the washing machine. It was just flowing out,” Soto said.

Soto called the Ozark Department of Public Works emergency hotline. Public works employees used a high-pressure jetting procedure to clear an obstructed line.

“The first one we’re confident there was a problem with a main downstream,” Ozark Director of Public Works Larry Martin said, adding that there was no way to be sure where exactly the obstruction happened. “As it cleared, it, of course, just kept washing it downstream.”

As public works employees jetted the line, problems in the basement migrated upstairs at the Soto house.

Similar sewage problems occurred in neighboring homes.

“When waste water backs up into a home you’d want to verify as quickly as possible the cause, whether it is a private line or part of a larger issue,” Martin said.

The city has an employee on call 24 hours a day to answer calls to the Public Works emergency hotline.

Jessica Soto contacted ServiceMaster to clean up the house on Jan. 21. The overflow occurred about 10 a.m. A ServiceMaster employee showed up about noon to offer an estimated cleanup cost.

Eleazar Soto says he was told by a city employee that the Department of Public Works would need to sign off on the estimate before any work began, as though the city would be paying for the cleanup.

“If it was us, if it was our fault, they would have been here an hour or so later — if it was our fault. But the city told us to get a quote,” Soto said.

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“I never saw a quote, and they didn’t come out until 6 p.m. that night. If we would have known that we were paying for it, we would have said ‘Do it right away,’ but we were doing everything the city told us to do,” Jessica Soto said.

The Sotos filed a claim that reached the city of Ozark’s general liability insurance carrier, Trident Insurance Services.

Soto says his claim that the city should be responsible to pay for damages to his recently remodeled basement was denied.

The insurance company reportedly paid for repairs at neighboring homes.

“Why did they deny my claim and they paid for everyone else’s damage?” Soto said. “Oh man, I was mad.”

A second sewage backup struck the family on Labor Day weekend. Eleazar, Jessica and the boys took a weekend getaway and returned to another nightmare in their basement.

“We came home, we were still in a good mood, and as soon as we opened up that (front) door, boom… the smell just hit us in the face,” Eleazar Soto said. “There was standing sewage in the basement.”

The Department of Public Works installed a backflow preventer in the Sotos’ front yard in September. The family has not experienced any issues with overflow since. Martin recommends any homeowner with a basement to install a backflow preventer.

As Eleazar Soto presses on with attempting to get the city to pay for repairs to his basement, an estimated $17,000, the Department of Public Works is more active in his neighborhood.

Martin says South Seventh Street and surrounding streets are on his staff’s watch list. Crews increased the amount of line inspection with sewer cameras and line-jetting in the area.

Martin says he isn’t sure of the status of Soto’s insurance claim and why Trident Insurance Services would deny paying for damages.